What was the Age of Discovery?

The Age of Discovery was a period of European global exploration that started in the early 15th century with the first Portuguese discoveries in the Atlantic archipelagos and Africa, as well as the discovery of the Americas by Castile in 1492, and the Portuguese discovery of the ocean route to the East in 1498, and by a series of European naval expeditions across the Atlantic and later the Pacific, which continued until the 18th century. It is sometimes regarded as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era, along with its contemporaneous Renaissance movement.

The Age of Discovery was led by the the great sea adventurers in their search for a route to spice markets of the Far East when the eastern Mediterranean were blocked by powerful rivals. When Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to reach India in 1488, the Portuguese concentrated their efforts to the south and east. The Spanish, who agreed to divide the world in two with the Portuguese in the Treaty of Tordesillas on 7 June 1494, sailed west. They were not aware of the American continents and no one knew there was a Pacific Ocean.